CBO learned that the official online sales channel of L'Oreal's Meiji brand has stopped placing orders today (September 30). The brand closed its official stores on e-commerce platforms such as Tmall, Douyin, and JD.com, and completely withdrew online.
According to the official customer service of Meiji, consumers can still purchase branded products through retail channels such as Watsons, Prismon, Guerlain Beauty, Sino Beauty, Zeyan Beauty, Zhou Tian Famous Makeup, Baoding Dongda, Jinmeng Makeup, Hattari, Xichang Huatai, Putian Domestic Products, Chunmei Space, and Airport Beauty.
01
It used to be the "mask king" with an annual sales of 1 billion
According to public information, Meiji was born in 2003, and the brand's early target consumer groups were mainly mid-to-high-end users, with product pricing of 20-40 yuan/piece, and sales channels also chose to be in shopping mall counters.
Later, considering that the domestic mid-to-high-end mask market has long been a "competition for hegemony", and there are many internationally renowned brands such as Lancôme and Olay, the United States immediately adjusted its model, lowered prices, and carried out differentiated competition. The brand positioned young consumers, expanded the audience and cut into the Watsons channel.
With the first-of-its-kind "affordable mask + single piece sales" model, the United States has pushed the mask from a niche skin care category to the fast digestion track of the public, and once became the leader of China's patch mask.
In 2005, Magic Mask was launched on the shelves of Watsons and quickly occupied the market with its single-piece self-selected sales form. In 2007, Meiji became the No. 1 brand in the sales volume of Watsons facial masks.
In 2009, the market share of Magic Mask has reached about 15%, and it has been ranked first in China's mask market for five consecutive years.
In 2010, the United States entered a climax period of development. On September 24, 2010, with a domestic mask market share of 15.1% and an oversubscribed 784 times, Meiji Holdings became the "stock king" of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange that year. In fiscal year 2010, the sales volume of Magic reached 631 million Hong Kong dollars (about 500 million yuan), an annual growth rate of 68.5%, and a net profit of 117.4 million Hong Kong dollars (about 95 million yuan).
In 2012, Meiji reached the peak of its performance, and its sales climbed all the way to 1.353 billion Hong Kong dollars (about 1.221 billion yuan). According to Nielsen data, at that time, the market share of facial masks in China was as high as 26.4%, firmly occupying the top spot. At that time, the total number of sales outlets had increased from 3,828 to 6,264, and it planned to increase its efforts to develop the beauty products franchise market to penetrate the third and fourth tier cities in China, and the number of outlets increased from 3,615 to 5,000.
02
After "selling" L'Oréal, the strategic adjustment continued
In 2013, the limelight was favored by the international beauty giant L'Oreal Group, which wholly acquired the company for 6.538 billion Hong Kong dollars (equivalent to about 5.433 billion yuan) and incorporated it into the mass cosmetics department, which was also the highest amount of foreign acquisition of Chinese daily chemical brands at that time. In 2014, Meiji was delisted from the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and officially became a member of L'Oréal.
However, it is regrettable that after the acquisition, the United States not only failed to continue its brilliant performance, but ushered in the "pain of acquisition".
According to the financial report, in the second half of 2013 after the acquisition, the net profit of Meiyi fell by nearly 80%; In the first half of 2016, the impairment loss was 213 million euros (about 1.667 billion yuan), and it was 90% lower than the peak in 2012.
According to Xingtu data, in 2016, the market share of online masks shrank to 2.1%, ranking eighth, and the top three are: Yiyezi, Membrane Family, Yu Nifang and other domestic brands. Jean Paul Agon, then Chairman and CEO of L'Oréal, commented: "Midea now faces 10 times more competitors than it did when it was acquired two years ago. ”
In fact, in the face of such a declining performance, L'Oréal Group did not sit still. Since 2015, L'Oréal has made a series of strategic adjustments to Meiji, covering brand image, product research and development, channel layout and price strategy, including the high-profile title of the short video program of online celebrity Papi sauce, the creation of the "Fresh Injection Film Power Series" of the film-liquid separation mask, and the hiring of post-95s traffic actress Guan Xiaotong as the brand's latest spokesperson.
During this period, the United States also returned to double-digit growth in 2017. Xingtu data statistics show that in 2017, in the sales list of Double 11 masks on the three major e-commerce platforms of Tmall, Jingdong and Vipshop, Meiji ranked among the top three; The whitening milk skin mask launched in the first half of 2019 once ranked TOP1 on Tmall whitening mask; The SOS first-aid gauze mask, which was launched in December 2019, rushed into the TOP2 of Tmall repair mask when it was launched.
Then, the beauty is tepid online. Feigua data shows that from 2021 to 2023, the GMV of Meiji Douyin will be 100w-250w, 500w-750w, and 250w-500w respectively, ranking outside the top 1000. In the past month, the GMV of Meiji Douyin is only 2.5w-5w, and the sales volume is 250-500, and so far in 2024, the GMV of Meiji Douyin has been maintained at 25w-50w, ranking 4533rd in Douyin beauty.
● Screenshot of Feigua data
It is worth noting that this change in the channel is the second major adjustment made by Meiji in the 19 years since it was fully removed from Watsons in 2018. In fact, there are already traces of a comprehensive retreat.
As early as September 2022, Midea launched a strategic upgrade: on the product side, it continued to build a multi-category matrix from facial masks to skin care; On the service side, it returned to offline channels and launched hospital-level nursing services at the same time.
L'Oreal has said that the return of beauty to offline is to let more consumers see the brand in the offline scene. Brands can not only exist on the mobile phone screen, but also allow consumers to touch the products with their own hands and experience the hospital care services brought by Meiji, "Beauty is the belief that the ultimate experience is service".
In recent years, the development of the Meiji brand has been full of ups and downs, in the early years, it gave up the Watsons channel and focused on online, and now it has bid farewell to online channels and turned offline. In the future, CBO will continue to pay attention to the development of the Meiji brand.